For many years Emmanuel Lazega has explored communication behavior and decision-making processes of small workgroups within larger organizations. To account for the knowledge claims of members of those groups, and for the ways in which such claims are legitimated collectively and translated into action, he presents a theory of the interactive elaboration of information on which decisions are based.

Assistants and administrators are the backbone of every organization. Discover how to innovate and thrive in this vital sector with The Modern-Day Assistant.

As technology and disruption continue to reshape the business world, the responsibilities and skills of a modern-day assistant have transformed. Executives and leaders are more dependent than ever on the unique and varied responsibilities of their administrators and assistants. Drawing upon decades of experience, Lucy Brazier OBE demystifies the strategies and approaches that will allow you to reach your full potential as an assistant, and how to accelerate your career while doing so.

From building your network and developing your communication skills to time management and strategic planning, The Modern-Day Assistant is the ultimate guide to developing your abilities and reaching your full potential at work. It also explores how you can effectively capitalize upon your skills, whether that's climbing the ranks of the assistant sector or pivoting into a new role.

Clear, actionable steps for you to build new values, experiences, and perspectives into your organizational culture, infusing it with the diversity, inclusion, and belonging employees need to feel accepted, be their best selves, and do their best work. Bypass the faulty processes and communication styles that make change impossible in so many other organizations; access these practical tools and ideas for increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in your company. Filled with actionable advice Alida Miranda-Wolff learned through her own struggles being an outsider in a work culture that did not value inclusion, and having since worked with over 60 organizations to prioritize DEI initiatives and all the value and richness it adds to the workplace, this roadmap helps leaders: Learn why creating an environment where everyone feels belonging is the new barometer for employee engagement. Develop an understanding of the key terms around DEI and why they matter. Assess where your organization is today. Define and take the small steps that build new muscle memory into an organizational culture. Increase employee engagement, collaboration, innovation, communication, and sense of belonging. Build confidence in how to solve future DEI-related challenges. Get buy-in from colleagues (and even resisters) who can clearly see how to move forward and why. Overcome any limiting work environment and build all new processes and communication priorities that allow your employees to be a part of something greater than themselves while your organization learns to value and embrace the unique experiences and perspective that each employee brings to the company.

This book is an essential guide for anyone who wishes to develop successful business communication. It provides authentic and memorable workplace scenarios where learners become English communicators when solving authentic problems doing business together. The book aims to help learners: Use authentic workplace materials to solve problems using English Understand how language can be used as a lingua franca effectively when communicating Understand how intertextuality between shared spoken and written texts drives communication Improve communicative performance in spoken and written texts Become familiar with the communication realities of workplaces that are becoming increasingly technology driven and globalised This book will help learners become better equipped with communication strategies through its real life applicable and skills-based examples and will be a useful reference in the digital age.

This book contains papers, presented at an international conference organized by the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism in Milan, that provide details on how corporate artifacts are invested with meaning, are related to control, and can be used as cultural indicators in research.

Why do projects fail?The people who plan and execute major projects are often highly skilled and highly regarded. They are not obviously incompetent. Where a project uses external suppliers or contractors as a significant support to project delivery, the risk of a fundamental failure seems to escalate. Is this a failure of project management? A failure of procurement? A failure of both? Or are there other factors at play? This book aims to be a self-help manual. It will enable you to improve your personal and corporate performance. It will also help you ensure that the sub-system elements of a project, where there are 'interfaces' between systems that need to 'talk' to each other, will be effectively managed - with no nasty surprises. Buying and integrating advanced technologyRight First Time - Buying and integrating advanced technology for project success does not pretend to hold the key to a 'nirvana' of project delivery. Rather, it gets straight to the point about buying - and integrating - advanced technology. It recognises that integrating sub-systems is fertile ground for failure and that effective procurement is increasingly important in project delivery. The failure of one sub-system can undermine an entire project, and the integration of sub-components is all too often assumed to be a technical problem that 'technical people' will overcome. Few projects make integration a defined subset of the overall project plan, yet most will benefit from doing so. A project management playbookA management book rather than a technical book, Right First Time - Buying and integrating advanced technology for project success focuses on the difficult issue of sub-system integration in the context of third-party (supply) relationships. If you are responsible for project management and practical delivery, at senior or junior level, it provides lots of practical questions to help you work through the issues, acting as a catalyst for supplementary questions and lines of investigation, focusing on potential problem areas relevant to your own context. Powerful learning outcomes and self-reflective questions at the end of each chapter enable you to create key action points and assess your organisation's approach to improve project management governance and ensure you get it right first time. Project managers, procurement managers, business change managers, commercial managers, mobilisation/transition managers, product managers and contract managers will all find value in this comprehensive guide to managing sub-system integration for project success.

If you're a fundraiser or social entrepreneur keen to secure large gift for any kind of social cause you need to be able to ask the right people for the right money in the right way. But how do you do that? In this ground-breaking book, global experts Bernard Ross and Clare Segal share their approach - used by major fundraising organisations from UNHCR in the Middle East to MSF in the US and from UK's Oxford University to MEF Museum in Argentina - which has been used to secure gifts up to $110m in a single ask. Whether you're an experienced fundraiser looking for new ideas, a newbie keen to get to the right approach fast, or a board member anxious to help out, you'll find the answers you're looking for inside. The book also has a special social bonus - every copy you buy will result in a donation to the WHO foundation to pay for a Covid 19 vaccine in a developing nation. "One reasonably useful book = one life-saving vaccine."

You've been asked to run a training session, workshop or meeting. What you need now is a foolproof way of making it both memorable and enjoyable to run - and to know that what you are doing will achieve the desired outcome and have lasting positive effects on your team. Anyone who has ever endured 'death by powerpoint' or a dry 'chalk and talk' session knows how not to do it, but how do you make sure that you get it right? This interactive guide is designed especially for busy managers - people whose main role is not training - and will take you through a simple step-by-step process that results in stimulating, fun and effective workshops and presentations. Just some of the many scenarios the book will help you tackle include: * How to put together training session from scratch when you have 'blank page, blank face' syndrome - here's the step-by-step solution * You've done some training but you aren't getting the desired results from your sessions - here's what do to about it * You haven't time to write 80 sexy PowerPoint slides for a session you are running - here's what to do instead that will be even more effective and take half the time * You're dreading the experience of being 'up the front' - here's how to shift the onus from you to your participants * How to be remembered for the right reasons! - Here's how to ensure that happens This is a book that 'walks the talk'- it presents what you need to know in an engaging, interesting, effective and quick way - exactly how you will be presenting in your meetings and worshops when you have finished reading it.

Adaptable Project Management - A combination of Agile and Project Management for All (PM4A) dispels the myth that Agile approaches to project management can only be used for software development. It gives advice on how to combine the benefits of Agile and waterfall project management methodologies for successful project implementation.

Start with What Works helps you to create new growth opportunities using the resources you already have at hand. It sounds obvious but frequently, managers discount the value of their familiar resources, and instead, they look outside for something new. This can demotivate employees and be costly in terms of money and time. It’s often a lot quicker, cheaper and safer to see your existing resources with fresh eyes. This book shows you how to recognise overlooked potential in existing resources, and how to flip the right switches to activate that potential.

Covering nine lessons you can use for a variety of situations, each will feature a case study and a new mindset to adopt. With practical tools and templates, each will trigger fruitful discussions and insights for your organisation. You’ll learn how to apply them to the situations you face, so that you can identify new opportunities, and turn those opportunities into action.

"At last we have a theory that helps us understand organizsations as the bustling collection of conflicts, partnerships, emotions, logic and intuitions that they really are. The ability to understand, predict and co-ordinate within this tangled web of relationships will be THE defining characteristic of tomorrow's great leaders." —Mary Crannell, President, Idea Sciences, Alexandria, VA.

"In an increasingly confrontational world, drama theory helps organisations to understand, communicate and survive." —Ken Bowen, Professor of Operational Research, Royal Holloway, University of London

"Making good decisions is extremely difficult when the actions of more than one party determine the final outcome. Drama theory is one of the few decision tools available to managers who must make decisions under such circumstances." —Niall Fraser, Co-Founder Open Options Corporation; formerly Professor at the University of Waterloo, Toronto

"In emotionally charged situations, preferences of people may change. Drama theory is an innovative theory that can explain how, and why, by showing when expressions of emotion can be a perfectly rational choice in game theory." —Steven Brams, Professor of Politics, New York University

When people care passionately, but their visions differ, then resolving a situation makes exceptional demands. Drama theory, upon which this pioneering guide to collaboration is based, provides a rigorous yet subtle framework for handling conflict and co-operation in any management context.

Written by one of the originators of the field, and rooted in experience gained over a decade of application, this guide to managing collaboration will be an essential source for managers, consultants and educators seeking to improve the quality of inter-organisational relationships and the effectiveness of collaborative working.

With the launch of the first edition of Integrated marketing communication (IMC) in 2001, it was the first title with this title; currently it still is. In recent international publications on this topic, authors have questioned the use of the concept IMC, preferring integrated brand promotion (IBP). These authors argue that IMC emphasises the communication effort, but that IBP goes beyond this, and they postulate that coordinated promotional messages need to have brand-building effects and not just communication effects. By implication it can be deduced from that statement that integrated marketing communication does not contain brand-building effects - which, of course, is not true. The use of the term promotion is also too limiting and refers to a specific communication device, therefore the authors of this book contend that IMC is still valid. The authors' view is that the brand is crucial and must be the focus when the situation and strategy require it. The central role of brand has been addressed in this title, and the importance is frequently mentioned in the various applications of the IMC elements. Since the publication of the second edition in 2005, valuable comments have been received from users. The validity of information was re-assessed, and new updates were made in terms of theory and South African market statistics. In addition, new cases have been included in various chapters, measurement techniques have been added in each chapter and more examples have been included.

From the authors of the international bestseller Yes!

This travel-sized handbook will become your go-to key for ensuring that the world says 'yes' to you, your ideas and your requests.

We all want to hear 'yes'. 'Yes' connects us to the world, and carries us into the future. So why do we find it so hard to get others to agree? And how can we improve our chances?

The Little Book of Yes contains 21 short essays that outline a range of effective persuasion strategies, each proven to increase the chances that someone will agree to your request. That someone could be a friend, a colleague, a partner, a lover, a manager, a sibling, a parent, even a stranger. The timeless principles and practical lessons in this collection can be used to tackle a variety of everyday challenges, from repairing a soured relationship to negotiating a higher fee for your work, from convincing a dithering friend to take action, to building your social network and personal brand.

Full of wisdom from the leaders in influence, with carefully curated advice, this little book is essential reading for any freelancer, manager, entrepreneur, parent or person who wants more from their world.

Large-scale marketing is not about persuading people to make buying decisions; it is about framing choices to make their buying decisions redundant. The best marketing doesn't just focus on the individual psychology of the consumer in isolation, but operates at a cultural level, taking into account their wider background, environment and lifestyle. Analysing the customers' choices and behaviours in this context means that they aren't even aware their buying decisions are being influenced.
In this rigorous and practical book Chris Hackley presents the latest research and provides need-to-know content for marketing professionals.

The battle for the meaning of your corporate image is on and Richard Telofski explains how you can fight back in today's online world. The battle is being waged in social media by ordinary and not-so-ordinary competition that subtly and insidiously competes for your company's reputation. Discover this new "Insidious Competition, " what they do, how they do it, and why they mangle the meaning of your company in the twenty-first century global town square. Learn what you can do about it. Recognize the Different Types of Insidious Competitors within Social Media. Learn about the Tools Each Type of Corporate Image Competitor Wields. Know the Attack Types They Use on YOUR Corporate Image. Understand That for Insidious Competitors It's Not about Truth and Reality. See How Digital Crowd Behavior Can Redefine Your Corporate Image. Explore Counter Strategies and Tactics. The new digital media battle will not be against hackers. It will be in the insidious struggle for meaning. Your company is under an inexorable attack in the new business and social world of the twenty-first century. That attack won't stop. Learn how to preserve your company's image, and, along with it, your job and your children's future.

Leatt, Mapa, and their panel of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers provide compelling reasons why the development and maintenance of effective government relations in the health industry must be a top priority for health industry management. This book explores how U.S. health care policies are similar to those of Canada--an important insight and unusual new way to understand how government/health industry processes actually work. The authors prove that government relations strategies must be built into the organization's strategic plan. They provide ways to monitor and improve the relationship between one's own health facility and the government agencies that influence its activities and survival.

Drawn from the public, private, and academic communities of the U.S. and Canada, the contributors to this wide-ranging volume conclude that the formation and implementation of health care policy is an essential component of any strategic planning process. Intended for top decision makers in the health industry, as well as for health policy makers throughout the public sector, this unique treatment of health care as a significant contemporary problem will also be of value to consumers, community groups, students, and anyone who demands a say in health policy and its implementation.

The essential guide for when (and how best) to use virtual communication tools, from video to instant messaging and everything in between.

Award-winning professor, management consultant, and virtual communications expert Andrew Brodsky is here to tell you that, yes, that meeting could have been an email. And that email? Maybe it should have been a voice note (really!). And your camera—it’s okay to turn it off; sometimes it’s even better.

If you’re crushed under the weight of your inbox or exhausted from back-to-back-to-back video calls, then Ping is here to help workers at all levels and of all stripes—remote, hybrid, and in person—who use communication technologies as part of their jobs. Split into three parts, this book tackles the core components of how to better navigate communication challenges and technology in contemporary workplaces.

Brodsky addresses critical topics such as:

• When to choose an email, instant message, or video call
• How to make better virtual first impressions
• Methods for optimizing communication productivity
• How to build strong relationships at a distance
• Ways to win negotiations and solve conflicts from behind a screen

With enlightening stories, interviews with top business leaders, and Brodsky’s cutting-edge social science research on virtual communication tools, Ping is the necessary playbook for mastering virtual communication to increase productivity, gain influence, and deepen connections.

'Could there be a more relevant book for our times? Vengoechea implores us to truly hear other people (maybe for the first time) and is the perfect author of a book on why we should listen like we mean it' - Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable Hear me out. Does this sound like you? You end a team meeting and can't recall a single thing that was said. You leave a conversation with a friend feeling disconnected and unfulfilled. You think you and your boss are on the same page, only to find out you haven't been meeting expectations. Fortunately, listening, like any communication skill, can be improved, and Ximena Vengoechea can show you how. As a user researcher, she has spent nearly a decade facilitating hundreds of conversations at LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. It's her job to uncover the truth behind how people use, and really think about, her company's products. In Listen Like You Mean It, she reveals the tips and tricks of the trade, including: - How to quickly build rapport with strangers - Which questions help people unlock what they need to say - When it's time to throw out the script entirely - How to recover from listener's drain